Woman recounts chilling grizzly bear chase

A warning is in place on a popular trail in Banff National Park after a grizzly bear chased a woman and her two dogs on Saturday.

Banff resident Annette Young was out on the Spray River loop trail near the Fairmont Banff Springs Hotel with her two dogs Pinot and Ronja kicksledding — an activity in which a small sled, which on occasion is pulled by dogs, is propelled by kicking the ground to help it along.

Young was on her way back to the trailhead parking lot at around 4 p.m. and less than half a kilometre from the hotel when she heard large footsteps and crunching snow behind her.

“I turned around and looked over my shoulder, and just went ‘oh my gosh,’” she said.

What she saw immediately struck fear in her heart — a large grizzly bear was not far behind her, chasing her and her two small dogs.

“Everything just stopped and slowed down,” she said. “You’re just thinking ‘oh my gosh this can’t be happening for real,’ realizing it is truly happening for real, so what do I do now, and how am I going to react to get out of this.”

Young commanded her dogs to run faster, as they had not shown signs that they were aware that the animal was following behind them. Upon looking back again, the woman noticed the bear increased its speed as well and continued to follow.

“I realized very quickly that was so not the right decision because the bear just picked up speed behind us,” she said.

She then stopped the dogs and turned around to face the bear, which at this point was only 10 metres away, and she grabbed her can of bear spray and began hollering at the animal to scare it off.

The dogs and the bear stood and stared at each other, neither animal exhibiting any noise or signs of aggression.

Young said she was worried about the unpredictability of how either of the animals might have behaved in that moment.

“I have no way of controlling what’s going through their minds,” she said. “I have no idea how quickly something could turn and go the other way around.”

The bear did not react to Young’s attempts to intimidate it, so Young got back on her kicksled and told the dogs to run, trying not to keep her back to the bear.

The bear followed along keeping pace behind. So every 100 metres or so for roughly 400 metres, Young would stop the sled and try to frighten the bold grizzly off, to no avail.

“Every time we started going, the bear would come right after us again,” she said. “So I would stop, flail my arms, I had my bear spray ready, I picked up rocks and I tried to fire off rocks.”

Finally, just as Young and her dogs were coming up to the trailhead parking lot, something spooked the bear enough for it to quit its chase.